1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to databases and more particularly relates to an apparatus, system, and method for identifying database and application system redundancy.
2. Description of the Related Art
Redundancy in an enterprise's databases and application systems increases with the number of databases and application systems in the enterprise. That is, some information may be represented more than once in a database. Additionally, similar data may be represented multiple ways in several databases throughout the enterprise. Having information stored as multiple representations and/or multiple times in an enterprise reduces operating efficiency when executing queries for data. Multiple application systems may access and process the information in the enterprise databases. These application systems provide similar or redundant functionality, which is expensive to maintain. Additionally, demand on storage systems increases with the amount of redundant data. Further, design of software for accessing the databases and training of employees for operating the software becomes more challenging as data and application system redundancy increases.
Database and application system redundancy often results after merging two companies. For example, when a company merges with a second company, both companies may have separate databases that include information about clients, employees, orders, and/or other information. After the first company and the second company merge, a search request to find a client queries both the first company's databases and the second company's databases. These queries may use different application systems that were separately implemented by the two companies. The same occurs when executing queries for employees, orders, and other information. As the number of databases grows, for example through mergers, the complexity of operating the databases increases. Increasing complexity results in added costs from hosting and storing multiple databases, modifying software for accessing the databases, and training of employees in operating the modified software.
Previously, identifying redundancy involved comparing databases and application systems two at a time against each other. The databases and application systems are manually compared to identify redundancy and opportunities for consolidation. With this approach, as the number of databases and application systems grows, the number of possible pairs of databases and application systems for comparison increases exponentially. For example, for N databases (N2−N)/2 pairs are compared to identify redundancy between each of the databases. One technique for implementing this approach may be placing all of the data elements of each database in a spreadsheet and manually comparing each line of the spreadsheet. For large numbers of databases this approach becomes difficult to implement.
The referenced shortcomings are not intended to be exhaustive, but rather are among many that tend to impair the effectiveness of previously known techniques in database and application system management; however, those mentioned here are sufficient to demonstrate that the methodologies appearing in the art have not been satisfactory and that a significant need exists for the techniques described and claimed in this disclosure.